The Identity, Not the Age
I started martial arts at fourteen. I didn’t know then that I was beginning something I would continue for the rest of my life. The disciplines changed, but the learning didn’t.
Movement, control, adaptation and the relationship between body and mind became a lifelong fascination. More than five decades later, I’m still a student.
Alongside that was another life — publishing, design, writing, events and ideas. I became Creative Director of Orbis Publishing. I published The Public Eye. I created Gene Aid. I competed against international agencies for the identity of an airline and won. I wrote four books. I worked with a world champion boxer, children, teachers and NHS staff.
At the time, those things didn’t necessarily appear connected.
Looking backwards, they are.
One life taught me about communication, curiosity, identity and what makes people want to participate. The other taught me about movement, adaptation, resilience and the relationship between body and mind.
And my own life taught me not to assume that where somebody begins determines where they have to end.
The above photographs are ten years apart.
The obvious thing to talk about would be my body. That’s what the fitness and wellness industry has taught us to notice. Before and after. Younger and older. Better or worse. Then comes the inevitable question: How can I look like that?
But the body isn’t the story.
I’ve injured every major joint in my body, undergone several invasive surgeries and my left knee is bone on bone. I’m not showing you these photographs to tell you what you should look like.
I’m showing them because appearance is one of the easiest ways we judge ageing — ourselves and other people.
Look at the photographs again.
What interests me isn’t what my body can still do. It’s what I choose to keep doing with the body I have.
Do we remain curious? Do we adapt? Do we keep learning, moving, contributing and connecting? Or, little by little, do we begin to withdraw?
After decades of apparently separate experiences, I realised that the same question had been running through almost all of them.
Are you participating or withdrawing from life?
That question became the organising principle for something I had been moving towards for much longer than I realised.
Participation Over Withdrawal.
It eventually acquired a name.